


ghosts in your house and ghosts in your memory and ghosts in your heart

by JHSC



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, Hurt Bruce Wayne, Hurt/Comfort, I Don't Even Know, I'm Sorry, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Not Canon Compliant, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:13:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26416219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JHSC/pseuds/JHSC
Summary: But the hands don't reach for you. They rise higher, unlatch catches on the helmet that you hadn't even noticed and pull it up and off, and oh---Oh.You're dreaming.This is a Jason dream.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 21
Kudos: 117





	ghosts in your house and ghosts in your memory and ghosts in your heart

**Author's Note:**

> There is no canon, only Zuul.

All the time, you dream of Jason.

You dream of Jason, the boy you knew -- his laugh, his smile, his tears, his scuffed sneakers kicked half underneath his bed.

You dream of a child Jason, younger than you ever knew him, cheeks chubby and eyes bright in a way he'd long grown out of by the time you met him.

You dream of Jason, grown. Jason graduating high school, college, graduate school. Jason's wedding, Jason's children, Jason's milestones he never had the chance to reach before death took him out of your arms and out of the world.

You dream of Jason and smoke and debris, and those are the worst dreams because they are real, and those are the best dreams because they don't hide from you the fact that Jason is gone. They don't generate in your heart that bright spark of hope viciously quenched at every waking.

Yes. The happy dreams, you think, are the worst.

You wake to the sound of an unfamiliar footstep. Too heavy to be made by the soft-soled sneakers of the nurses and medical assistants that fill the master bedroom, the Manor, and your days. Too solid to be Alfred, who is gone, or Dick -- also gone -- or Tim (gone). It's a footstep that doesn't belong, that in your right mind you'd be instantly suspicious of.

You wrench your eyes open. The room is dark, curtains drawn against the night. Your vision is frustratingly limited. The braces and straps holding your vertebrae together as they heal refuse to let you so much as turn your head. You think there is a shadow in the corner, just barely out of sight, one that doesn't belong, wasn't there an hour ago when the aide brought you your last dose of meds.

The shape moves. Shadows and sharp angles coalesce into the form of a man: tall, broad-shouldered, unfamiliar. Not Alfred or Dick or Tim (gone, all gone, left for good this time).

There's a full-faced helmet covering the man's head. It's polished and red.

An assassin, you think. You notice the guns, the knives, the assorted other weaponry strapped to the man's body like armor.

All right, you think. If that's how it has to be. So be it.

The man raises his hands. They're empty. It's to be strangulation, then. Or maybe suffocation. The bed's fancy pillows will finally get some use.

But the hands don't reach for you. They rise higher, unlatch catches on the helmet that you hadn't even noticed and pull it up and off, and oh---

Oh.

You're dreaming.

This is a Jason dream.

He's older in this dream. Grown into his face, filled out in his cheeks and jawline. There's a white streak of hair tucked in amongst his (perpetually) messy curls. But those are Jason's curls, and Jason's nose, and Jason's eyes staring down at you in an entirely Jason expression of confused frustration, last seen directed at algebra homework.

"Jay," you say in the dream.

"Hi," you say in the dream.

"You don't seem all that surprised to see me, old man," Jason says, and his voice has finished changing, finished deepening, but there's no mistaking that precious sound.

"Should I be?" you ask.

Dream-Jason frowns, more confused, more frustrated. "I mean, I've been dead for five years. To be honest I was expecting a bigger reaction to this visit than just, hi."

You smile. "I see you more nights than not, Jay. Whenever I close my eyes, you're here."

You watch him close his eyes, himself, and grimace. But there's no blood. No broken bones. No dried tear tracks. You say, "You look good. All grown up tonight. The white is new."

Jason's hand twitches, like he'd stopped himself from reaching for that white curl self-consciously. "Christ. What kind of drugs do they have you on right now?"

"All of them, I think," you say.

Jason bends over to take a closer look at the contraption currently keeping gravity from finishing Bane's hard work. He pokes the straps, hums over the braces, and steps to the end of the bed to flick the tip of your left toe.

"Feel that?" he asks.

"No. The nerves are pinched," you explain. "I'll get feeling back eventually, once my spine heals."

"Once your spine heals, that's all," he scoffs. "In the meantime, who's playing at being Batsy? Dick?"

You grimace. You can't turn away because you can't turn your head or your neck or the rest of your body while in traction. You don't want to close your eyes and then open them to find Jason gone. You stare past him at the far wall of the bedroom.

"He left," you say. "Before this happened."

Jason scowls, and it's such a familiar look on his grown-up face that you smile, again, to see it. "What about the new kid, the replacement?"

You feel the smile crumble. "He left, too. A few months after Dick."

"Quitter," Jason mutters. He turns to look around the bedroom, his gaze resting on the full hamper of linens, then the haphazard array of pill bottles and medical detritus on the dresser. He spends a long, long moment staring at the easy chair tucked into the far corner of the room, out of the way and neglected. "So Alfred ran off too, I take it?"

"Yes," you say. It comes out as a rasp. You don't want to admit it. You don't want to feel it -- the emotional aftermath of driving them away, one after the other, until you were alone in your house with no one but your guilt and your ghosts. You don't want to admit -- to Jay, to yourself -- how it felt to drag your broken body out of that gutter, knowing you'd squandered any help you could have asked for. Setting up the cover story. Calling the most discrete, most expensive doctors. Being tended to by highly-paid professionals who rotate in and out so often you can't even remember their names. 

Crying from the pain of your broken back in the middle of the night with no one around to say, "My dear master Bruce, must you always do this in the dark?" 

With no one around to distract you with, "Hey I meant to tell you, on my last Titans mission there was this type of local spider that strung webs that went for miles between treetops, so of course we all thought: zipline!"

With no one around to shove a straw in front of your face, with, "I read that vitamin C helps with calcium absorption so I made you an acai yogurt smoothie."

"Why?" Jason asks, breaking you out of your thoughts.

"Why what?"

"Why did they all leave? Especially Alfred, I thought he'd die here and just keep on butlering as a ghost," the specter of Jason clarifies.

"I…" You stumble around the words. "I haven't exactly been…. my best self…. since I lost you. They seemed to all… reach their limit."

Jason sighs and crosses his arms. He is still grown up, still sound in body, still bloodless. This is a good dream. It will hurt so much more when you wake up. But right now, you can't bring yourself to mind.

"You reacted poorly to bereavement and took it out on the people around you instead of getting help. I'm shocked, B. Absolutely hum-dingered. What a goddamn surprise. Glad to see absolutely nothing about you has changed."

He bends to pick up his helmet and tucks it against his side. "Well, I'm off. Places to go, people to kill, you know how it is."

"Wait," you say.

"Jay," you say.

"Please," you say.

Sighing, Jason turns back to you. "What is it, Bruce?"

"I don't want you to leave. I don't want this dream to end," you admit.

"All dreams end, B," Jason says. His voice is deeper. Serious. "At some point, you gotta wake up and start living your damn life again."

He puts the helmet on.

"I love you, Jay," you say. 

You always try to get it out at least once. To make up for all those wasted, wasted moments where you never said it at all.

"I'm shocked. Absolutely hum-dingered," Jason says, voice distorted by the helmet, inflections shaved down to an even tone. "Imagine if you ever managed to actually say that to the people in your life. The surprise might kill them."

The room is empty. You didn't see Jason leave, but you can tell that he's gone. And this version of Jason, this grown-up, wear-worn, weaponized dream Jason -- he didn't sound like he'd be returning. 

You close your eyes. You brace yourself for the morning, when you'll wake up to strangers in your room and your son in his grave and the rest of your family scattered to the four winds.

*

You wake up, and it's morning, and someone is in the room with you.

The easy chair has been pulled out of the corner. It's tucked in close to the side of the bed, close enough to touch if you could move your hands. Close enough to reach if you could move your arms.

You wish you could move your arms. You wish you could reach and hold and not let go.

"Morning, Sleeping Beauty," Dick says, smiling.

"Dick," you say. "You're… here?"

"Yeah," he says. "I got a text from one of your doctors with a question about your medical history. I hadn't known you were hurt or I would have been here earlier."

"Kept it out of the papers," you say, thoughts swimming through a wine-dark sea of confusion -- doctors and questions and medical records and a wistful dream all churning together haphazardly.

"Makes sense," Dick says. "Alfred and Tim will get here later today. How are you feeling?"

"I had… a dream."

"Yeah? Was it a good dream?" Dick asks.

You think about dream-Jason and you think about the Jason that was once so very much alive. You think about ghosts in your house and ghosts in your memory and ghosts in your heart. You think about the things you cling to and the things you allow to slip from your fingers for fear of breaking them in their fragility.

You think about the family you've lost and the family you've found and lost again and maybe have the chance now to find again.

Every night you dream, and every morning you wake up..

"It was a good dream," you say. "But not as good as waking up."

Dick's face shines. "Yeah? Why's that?"

You smile. "You're here. And I love you."

*

**Author's Note:**

> Confession: I wrote this while recovering from a moderate concussion. I'm as shocked as you are.


End file.
